The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)


Announcements and information

Dungeon Master

Posts: 1531

Joined: Saturday, 5th March 2011, 06:29

Post Sunday, 26th May 2013, 01:35

The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

As some folks have noticed over the last few months I've been trying to do something about tackling the unwieldy number of outstanding tickets on Mantis.

The number of open bugs had been growing steadily for quite some time. There were something like 1500 tickets at the time I started, there are now a little over 1100. As can be seen from the summary page, we now have less bugs open than we did a year ago. Before I started, all those green numbers were red.

This is a call for help to Tavern members (as well as the devteam of course!) to hopefully further reduce that number. Progress is much slower now than the initial push and if we're ever going to get to a reasonable number (hell, less than 500 would be a start!) it could do with a little help from everyone. (And a huge thanks to the many people who've been doing this already!) Improving the quality of Mantis will be a considerable help - bugs are less likely to stagnate and never get fixed, it's easier to keep on top of, it encourages people to use it if it's well-organised and an effective tool, and it even becomes a better resource for coders who want to contribute looking for somewhere to get started.

So, anybody who has ever used Mantis should look back through tickets they have opened (which are still open). You can see these on the "My View" page on Mantis. For each bug please do one of the following:

  • Request it to be closed - if the bug has since been fixed, or the problem is irrelevant now (e.g. relates to a removed feature, or you've changed your opinion).
  • Move Feature Requests to the devwiki. There was a time when Mantis had a Feature Request category but this was retired in favour of the wiki. Feature Requests should only go on Mantis when accompanied by a patch. So if you have old FRs on Mantis and would still like them to be considered by anyone, add them to an appropriate section on the wiki, or raise a discussion here (nobody will ever see them on Mantis anyway). Then add a comment to the Mantis FR requesting it to be closed. I will eventually close all Mantis FRs so please don't ignore this if you don't want your idea to be lost.
  • If the issue still exists but your ticket relates to an old version of Crawl, update it. This saves a ton of time because I don't have to test myself to see if the bug still happens. Add a comment to say it still happens in the latest version of Crawl.
  • Add more detail / respond to comments. A lot of old tickets have rotted because a developer asked a question and the reporter didn't reply. If I see tickets like this then I'll just assume that the bug isn't reproducible and close the ticket. Additionally, if your ticket didn't have detailed reproduction steps, and/or an attached save / crashdump, and/or other detailed information such as system specs / driver details / OS version (e.g. in the case of intermittent crashes) then please update it with this kind of detail.
  • Check for related/duplicate bugs. If there are duplicate tickets they can get linked together and one of them closed. Linking related bugs together means that if a developer is looking at one they can investigate the others while they're at it, this helps us be efficient. So add a comment to your ticket with #ids of similar or duplicate bugs that you found.

Of course there's no harm in looking through other people's old bugs too and taking the above steps (this is basically what I've been doing!) or even just commenting (obviously only if you have relevant comments/information) ... I've seen loads of old tickets that are extremely quick fixes/changes that have never been made simply because nobody agreed on the correct solution; the ticket then got pushed down the list and forgotten.

Thanks for helping!

For this message the author mumra has received thanks: 4
dpeg, galehar, Grimm, MyOtheHedgeFox

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1776

Joined: Monday, 21st February 2011, 15:57

Location: South Carolina

Post Sunday, 26th May 2013, 16:20

Re: The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

I had no idea that bug reporters were able to close tickets. I assumed only developers could do that. I have tons of bugs that I reported that have been resolved, but I didn't know it was my responsibility to close them. Maybe others are clueless like me, and the "your bug has been submitted" message text or the email reporting that the bug is submitted should contain some instructions on how the reporter of the bug should follow up.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 1613

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 21:54

Post Sunday, 26th May 2013, 17:52

Re: The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

Closing bugs once they've been resolved isn't a big deal (it's not a very important distinction, other than letting us know the reporter checked it again and agrees that it's fixed now). It's open, unresolved bugs that mainly need looking at.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 11111

Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00

Post Monday, 27th May 2013, 06:19

Re: The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

mumra wrote:[*] Request it to be closed - if the bug has since been fixed, or the problem is irrelevant now (e.g. relates to a removed feature, or you've changed your opinion).


Does it mean we should add a note like "Please close the ticket" to our bug reports? Or is there some other way to request it?

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1567

Joined: Friday, 21st January 2011, 22:56

Post Monday, 27th May 2013, 11:08

Re: The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

I think that's the only way to request it via mantis. So a note would be great.

For this message the author Galefury has received thanks:
Sandman25

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 486

Joined: Thursday, 28th June 2012, 17:50

Location: U.S.

Post Friday, 28th June 2013, 18:38

Re: The Great Mantis Bug Purge (please help!)

jejorda2 wrote:I had no idea that bug reporters were able to close tickets. I assumed only developers could do that. I have tons of bugs that I reported that have been resolved, but I didn't know it was my responsibility to close them.

That's what I thought too, though I've only reported one bug ever. fwiw after reading this I went and closed it.

Return to Bulletin Board

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests

Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.